Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

  As the demon rains down a second blow, Rebecca emerges, also towel-clad, through the fire door connecting the boys’ and girls’ corridors. She suffers no similar disconnect between eyes, brain and vocal cords. As Gillian runs, flat out, it feels like the entire passageway is vibrating with the scream.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Blake asks. ‘Sounded like a window breaking.’

  ‘Heard glass, yeah,’ says Kane.

  ‘I’d better go and check.’

  ‘More likely somebody dropping a bottle outside. Just stay put - it won’t be the last tonight, and we can put the kids on clean-up duty in the morning, when they can actually see what they’re doing.’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ Blake agrees. ‘It didn’t sound like a bottle to me, though.’

  They hear some screams, muted slightly by the music from the dining room, but audible nonetheless.

  Blake looks concerned. Hasn’t spent quite enough time around kids, then. If you reacted to every shriek, thinking it was a scream of distress, you’d never be at peace.

  Kane sighs, Blake once again very effectively hot-wiring his conscience.

  ‘Should probably check it out,’ he says, getting up. ‘About time we relieved the others anyway.’

  As he opens the door, a female voice echoes down the corridor, and Kane feels every hair on his flesh prick up in response.

  ‘That was a scream.’

  Caitlin felt this odd sense of achievement when she realised Rocks was coming. She had to stifle a giggle as inappropriate and possibly insulting, but there was something simultaneously elating and comical about it, to say nothing of laughing at her own startlement when she felt the spasms and looked down to see the resultant jets.

  She looks in his eyes, knows she won’t be able to stem laughter if she sees it in his face too, but instead he seems disoriented, like she’s just shaken him awake.

  He looks down.

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ he says.

  The now palpably doped-up Theresa puts two fingers down the collar of Marky’s shirt and leads him towards the door of the outbuilding.

  Marky languidly complies, though one of his hands is also holding one of Yvonne’s. Giggling, she moves off too, three in a chain, reaching a hand out to Beansy. Now this is promising.

  The jay is done and disposed of, the remains of the roach ground into the frozen-hard earth. No danger of conflagration, but better watch they don’t trip over a lawnmower or walk into a big steaming pile of freshly laid cowshite.

  Theresa stumbles a little, causing their wee chain to halt and disconnecting Yvonne’s fingers from Beansy’s. Beansy jogs ahead a wee touch, making it to the door first and sliding the heavy wooden crossbeam out of one of its joists. One side of the door swings open slightly. Theresa releases her fingers from Marky’s collar and steps unsteadily into the gap, where she stops with a shudder.

  Must have seen something she doesn’t fancy. Maybe there is a big steaming pile of freshly laid cowshite. But then she jerks her head back and stretches, as if on tiptoes, except that when Beansy happens to glance down, he sees that her feet aren’t touching the ground. The lassie is fucking levitating. Mental.

  ‘Check oot David Blaine,’ Marky says. ‘How are you doing that?’

  She rises higher, just a few inches, then Beansy hears this bubbling noise, followed by a dripping. Something’s running off her feet on to the ground. Something dark.

  She begins to turn in mid-air. That’s when Beansy sees that she’s got a pitchfork driven through her stomach and is being pivoted on it by . . .

  ‘God in Govan.’

  The light is very dim inside the barn, spilling in through high windows and the open door, but it’s enough to make out what is holding the pitchfork: to see it from head to . . . tail.

  Horned head. Pointed tail.

  With a sudden swing of two powerful arms, it hefts the pitchfork from side to side, whiplashing Theresa off her impalement, then drives the fork through Marky as he stands there, helplessly gawping.

  Beansy, instantly sobered, slams the door closed with his shoulder and pulls the crossbeam back down on to both its joists. The blood-soaked points of the pitchfork splinter through the door as he does so, the nearest spike stopped a centimetre from his eye.

  He throws himself back, lands sprawling on the hard earth, then scrambles to his feet, grabs Yvonne by the waist and drags her off, running.

  ‘Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.’

  ‘Oh Jesus. Theresa. What was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. But I’m no’ slagging Marilyn Manson ever again.’

  In the three-quarter darkness of the outbuilding, Marky lies on the floor, transfixed and paralysed by injury, pain and fear. Hyperventilating, convinced he’s dreaming or delirious, he watches the demon pull the implement from the door. It stands there for a moment, pitchfork in hand, a tableau of one of the images he saw in that book Marianne was passing around at lunchtime. That’s good. He’s seen the image before. That means he is dreaming. But dreams never hurt like this. In dreams, you couldn’t feel the chill of the earthen floor and your blood turning cold as it soaked your clothes.

  The demon strides across to where Theresa is crawling, laboriously and quivering, leaving a blood-streaked trail on the ground. She’s heading away from the door, no destination in mind, knows only that she has to move. The demon drives its weapon through her head, pinning both to the floor, then steps away, leaving the pitchfork standing upright, towering over the twitching body.

  Marky enjoys a moment’s hope that it has abandoned its weapon. Then he sees the demon stride towards the far wall, upon which hangs another pitchfork, a spade, a rake, a hoe, an edging tool, a fire-axe, a baling hook and a chainsaw.

  Kane hears the screaming abruptly stop as he and Blake hasten along one of the link corridors, replaced by the sound of running and gasping, desperate, panicking breaths. They emerge into the main corridor leading from reception to the dormitory block, and are almost bowled like skittles as Gillian clatters headlong into them. Kane just manages to stay on his feet, putting his arms out to help Gillian retain her balance too, but she immediately starts struggling to get away. Her head is down, pressed against Kane’s chest as though she’s trying to charge through him, her breathing a series of anxious whoops.

  ‘Gillian, keep the heid. What’s wrong?’

  ‘No, no,’ she gasps, her legs thrashing as her feet seek better purchase to wriggle free and push past him.

  ‘Gillian,’ Kane says more firmly, taking her chin in his hands and raising her face so that she will look at him. That’s when he sees that her face is spattered with blood. Her eyes are like headlights, stretched wide and flitting restlessly, unable to focus on any single thing, almost like they’re attempting to escape from her head and flee on their own.

  ‘Jesus, what happened?’

  She’s still struggling. Blake puts an arm around her, starts talking softly just so that she’ll hear his voice.

  ‘Gillian, it’s Mr Kane and Father Blake. It’s all right now, you just need to catch your breath, then you can talk to us.’

  Kane hears more footsteps in the corridor, turns to see Heather walking briskly towards them.

  ‘Just calm down,’ Blake continues. ‘Breathe slowly.’

  Gillian’s eyes focus on each of them just long enough to convey that she thinks they’re insane.

  ‘Let me go. Let me go.’

  ‘It’s all right. You’re all right. Just breathe—’

  ‘It’s not all right,’ she shouts, her limbs suddenly still. ‘It’s coming. It’ll kill us all.’

  Kane, Blake and Heather look at each other. Kane’s thinking booze and teen hysteria, but there’s the blood.

  ‘What’s coming, Gillian?’ Blake asks.

  ‘The Devil. We’ve got to run. Let me go. Let me go.’

  With this last, Gillian’s voice crumbles into sobbing and her legs give too, like an act of exhausted, hopeless surrender. She clings o
n to Kane, crying and trembling. Definitely teen hysteria.

  Heather steps in, putting an arm around her and tugging her gently away from Kane.

  ‘Come on with me, we’ll get you a seat,’ Heather says.

  Gillian lets go of Kane, leaning into Heather now for support. Then she suddenly shoves Heather aside and bolts down the hall towards reception.

  ‘I’ll go after her,’ Heather says. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Prank gone wrong? Bang on the head?’ Kane replies. ‘We’ll check out the dorms.’

  Heather has never seen Gillian move so fast. The girl is normally slowed by equating enthusiasm with dweebdom, as much as her pal Julie is by her bulk, but tonight Heather knows she’s not catching her before she reaches the end of this corridor. In her haste, one of Gillian’s legs catches the end of a sofa in the sitting area and she goes sprawling to the floor. It buys Heather only a couple of seconds, as Gillian’s on her feet again very quickly, heading for the dining room, shouting. Her voice can’t compete with the music, but Heather can hear it well enough, and so does Sendak, who is just emerging from the double doors along the passageway beyond the far end of reception.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here! We’ve got to get everybody out of here!’

  Sendak looks to Heather quizzically over the approaching Gillian’s head. Heather gestures to him to grab her.

  ‘Hey, hey hey, let’s just settle it down,’ Sendak says, intercepting her before she can reach the party, then forcibly escorting her back towards Heather.

  ‘You’ve got to let me go. We’ve all got to get out or we’re all dead. It’s inside. It’s coming.’

  ‘What’s coming?’

  ‘The devil. The devil is here.’

  ‘She’s hysterical,’ Heather says redundantly, as Sendak sits Gillian down on one of the armchairs, crouching in front of her so that she can’t run.

  ‘What about the blood?’ Sendak asks. ‘Are you hurt?’

  Gillian begins shaking her head, more than merely by way of answering the question. It is increasingly trance-like, catatonic, saying no to absolutely everything that is currently assailing her.

  Sendak examines her, running a hand over her scalp and down her face, smearing the blood on her forehead.

  ‘I can’t find any injuries. Whose blood is this?’ he asks.

  Still she shakes her head.

  He takes hold of her face, his powerful fingers firmly cupping her chin, forcing her to look at him.

  ‘Gillian, I need to know: whose blood is this?’

  She can’t shake her head any more, but Heather can still see the word ‘no’ repeating on a loop in Gillian’s eyes. She knows but she will not, cannot say.

  ‘Father Blake and Mr Kane have—’ Heather begins, but is halted by a shuddering crash and a shower of glass as one of the huge windows is shattered only feet away.

  Lying on the floor, sticky and glistening amid the thousands of tiny blinking fragments, is Dazza’s head.

  Heather stares at it, the enormity of its consequences too great for what she is seeing to quite add up. She looks instead to Gillian, who she now understands to be a few chapters ahead. Gillian is balled up, trembling and jerking.

  ‘I take it that answers my question, at least,’ mutters Sendak, getting to his feet, but the loop playing in Gillian’s eyes hasn’t altered. She shakes her head again, more slowly and pronounced than before, and manages a single whispered issue, the only word she can say, and in answer to Sendak, the only word that can make this worse.

  It fair gets the blood pumping, Radar would have to admit, the old Fratellis. Didn’t want to play it, to be honest. Got a bit fed up with it a wee while back, and feared everybody felt the same way - familiarity breeds contempt and all that - and he reckoned it would be a wrong move. However, he thought he’d be getting inundated with requests all night, and instead they’ve generally been content to leave the music to him, so it seemed churlish not to stick on the only song anybody asked for. He had a replacement cued up in case it was going down like a brick budgie, but it’s entirely the opposite. The whole place is bouncing now, and he fancies piling in. The last twenty times he’s heard that song it must have passed him by, but something about it tonight just reconnects him to Big Jan’s last-minute winner against the Huns to reignite three-in-a-row, and suddenly he’s down from the decks and birling on the dance floor.

  He can barely make out who he’s dancing with, but the vibe’s so good, nobody seems to care: they’re all just going for it. The dry-ice machine has held up better than the disco lights, though he suspects that the former may have played a part in fusing the latter. There’s still the UV and the spinning laser-ball, with the welcome overall effect that all you can see is this pulsing throng of dancers unless you’re up close enough to make out any individual’s face.

  Radar spots a couple of figures in silhouette, identifiable as Deso and Fizzy via their naked torsos. He bops his way over, passing Adnan and Cam, still forming a tidy wee foursome with Marianne and the new Goth version of Deborah, who is kind of an emo in reverse as she seems to have learned how to smile since undergoing her makeover. He feels a wee pang of what-might-have-been over the fact that his pals appear to have scored while he was alone at the controls, but he wouldn’t trade it for the time he’s had; and besides, the night’s still young.

  He reaches them just in time for another round of the chorus. Looks like he’s seeing double, though: there appears to be another skin-headed figure in silhouette behind Fizzy, steam rising from the bloke despite being well inside the door.

  Then Fizzy moves his head aside just enough for Radar to see that his doppelgänger has horns, and a face like he’s been dooking for chips. Fizzy clocks Radar’s look of alarm. He turns around but doesn’t seem remotely perturbed by what confronts him.

  ‘Nae luck, Beansy,’ Fizzy says. ‘You shot your load last night. You’re never getting us twice with the same—’

  A taloned hand silences Fizzy by clutching his neck, then lifts him bodily off the floor before repeatedly driving a knife deep into his stomach.

  Radar watches this like it’s happening behind glass. The music seems to fade out, the image to retreat. There’s folk still dancing just behind where Fizzy is being gutted, oblivious through facing away, unsighted by the dry ice or, in the case of Jason and Samantha, steadfastly ignoring whatever immature high jinks their classmates are up to. Then there’s this eruption of blood from Fizzy’s mouth that arcs across the room, spraying clothes, hair and faces. At first they assume it’s Deso and Fizzy firing more water about the place. A number of irritated faces turn around, intending to tell whoever it was to fuck off.

  They’re not telling this to fuck off.

  Radar’s glass wall shatters as the air fills with screams. The music floods back into his ears and the hall floods with panic as everyone tries to flee. Not all of them make it.

  A precipitate keening of terrified voices rises above the music, playing an overture to stampede. Heather looks up from where she is all but cradling Gillian and sees kids pouring out of the dining room, buffeting Sendak as he hastens to investigate.

  Guthrie stands at the side of the entrance, urging the evacuees through and preparing to pull the doors closed against whatever is loose in there. It’s just a melange of shapes, flickering in steam and laser-light. He won’t admit to himself what he thinks he saw: it was merely something that he assumes his own troubled mind has projected. But what he can see for sure is that there are bodies on the floor and there is blood on every face that passes him. Blood and horror. He’s seen these faces before: this panic, this revulsion, this mortal fear, and once again, he has got there too late. Whatever else has to be confronted, he first needs to get the kids out safely.

  He sees Michelle stumble, Carol-Ann having caught her heel. They both go down. Two more kids trip over them, the rest managing to swerve around the growing tangle. Guthrie rushes to assist, and as he does so he sees, undeniably, what they a
re fleeing from.

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ he whispers, then launches himself into its path before it can reach its next prey.

  Sendak hauls the girls to their feet and all but throws them through the doorway into the corridor. He slams one of the double doors closed, grabbing hold of the other as Guthrie emerges from the steam and the flickering semi-darkness. He’s blood-soaked and stumbling, but upright, the creature nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Dan! Come on!’ Sendak yells.

  Guthrie stretches out a hand. Sendak does too, but he’s keeping hold of the door with his other, aware he cannot let go under any circumstances. It has to close, even if they both die closing it, but for now, he’s got a second’s grace. Guthrie staggers closer a step, then his legs give out and he drops to his knees, but he falls forward just enough for Sendak to reach his hand. As he takes hold of it, the demon hurls itself over Guthrie’s head and crashes into Sendak, knocking him backwards on to the floor of the corridor.

  Oh fuck.

  The creature scrambles to its feet less than a yard away, just inside the dining room. To his left and right he can see terrified kids who literally don’t know which way to turn. It’s quicker than him. He can’t even sacrifice himself by charging the thing because it will be through the gap before he’s even upright. Then the second door suddenly swings closed as Guthrie throws himself against it in what will be his final conscious act.

  There’s a clunk as the doors latch together. Sendak leaps to his feet and seizes both handles, using all his muscle to keep them in place. A blood-streaked blade juts through the tiny gap where the doors meet, stopping just short of his face, followed by a resounding thump as the creature tests their integrity.